Commissioners deliberate courthouse renovation costs, law enforcement funding

By Tay­lor Kaser -

Fund­ing for the remain­ing work on the cour­t­house ren­o­va­tion and tax monies for jail fund­ing were top top­ics from the pub­lic for Mor­row County Com­mis­sion­ers dur­ing the past week’s meetings.

Court Admin­is­tra­tor for the Court of Com­mon Pleas Sara Babich relayed a list of items and work still needed for the addi­tional court­room at the July 11 reg­u­lar meeting.

Babich began by address­ing the need for an audio/visual sound sys­tem for the new court­room. She noted that she has been look­ing into pric­ing dif­fer­ent sys­tems, and the ini­tial com­pany gave an esti­mate of around $70,000. After look­ing into other sys­tems, Babich found sys­tems rang­ing from $45,198 to $35,600.

All the sys­tems come with licens­ing fees includ­ing updat­ing fees of between $3,000-$4,000 per year for tech­nol­ogy updates.

“We’re prob­a­bly going to have, at this point, $70,000 left,” said Com­mis­sioner Tom Whis­ton of monies left in the Cour­t­house Ren­o­va­tion Project fund, “and this [the new sound sys­tem] prob­a­bly wasn’t even part of that money. If we have $70,000 left in our con­tin­gency fund after we’ve got the mov­able jury box and every­thing done– there’s also addi­tional fur­ni­ture required. If we just did the record­ing sys­tem, we would basi­cally erad­i­cate every fund we have left prior to even putting car­pet or any­thing else in.”

“Judge Hall and Judge Hick­son are very aware of the finan­cial sit­u­a­tion in the county,” said Babich, “We do a lot with very little.”

“What I’d like to see is a big pic­ture of where we’re going,” said Whis­ton, “and how we’re going to fund everything.”

She also dis­cussed buy­ing fur­ni­ture for the court room. Entirely new fur­ni­ture would cost $20,000, noted Babich, she’s also look­ing into other options includ­ing sur­plus items, state bid, refur­bished, and donations.

Ear­lier in the meet­ing the com­mis­sion­ers approved a change in the con­struc­tion direc­tive for the jury box in the new court­room. The new jury box will be mov­able, mounted on an alu­minum frame with wheels.

“Fund­ing for the change is com­ing from the cour­t­house ren­o­va­tion fund,” stressed Com­mis­sioner Tom Harden, “not the gen­eral fund bud­get.” The cost to design and build the jury box is $8,250.

At a pre­vi­ous meet­ing Harden said he had meet with every­one involved in the project, includ­ing archi­tects and the judges. The need for a mov­able jury box was explained by its dual func­tion­al­ity. The box can be moved to bring the jury closer to the judge and wit­nesses, and can also be moved to make room for addi­tional tables and pro­ceed­ings. Mov­able jury boxes are used in fed­eral courts, this will be the first of its kind in Ohio.

Cit­i­zen Glenda Wil­son asked if the mov­able jury box could be paid for from the spe­cial project fund? Oth­ers in the audi­ence also ques­tioned the neces­sity of hav­ing a spe­cial­ized jury box, since the court­room will be equipped with mod­ern sound technology.

“The judges are already using their spe­cial projects funds,” answered Whis­ton. Babich explained the advan­tages of hav­ing a space that could be used for mul­ti­ple pur­poses, for jury tri­als and meetings.

Whis­ton noted the seri­ous finan­cial sit­u­a­tion the county is in.

“My job as the Chair­man of the Com­mis­sion­ers is to help decide how we’re going to expend the lit­tle funds we have left. We might get to Hal­loween and that might be it. That’s the cold, hard real­ity of it.”

Babich dis­cussed that in addi­tion to work in the court­rooms, seri­ous work is needed for the adult pro­ba­tion office at some future date. She also noted the need to have sep­a­rate areas for adult and juve­nile pro­ba­tion. Hav­ing sep­a­rate areas for each is a state mandate.

A bid sub­mit­ted by Kokos­ing Con­struc­tion Com­pany, Inc. was accepted for the CDBG project on Co. Rd. 168 and Kenny Lane, amount­ing to $104,118.

Direc­tions Offender Ser­vices, Inc. sub­mit­ted a pro­posal to pro­vide four hours of men­tal health ser­vices per week to the Mor­row County Cor­rec­tional Facil­ity, for $60 per hour over a six month period. Three ele­ments included in the pro­gram are: on sight eval­u­a­tion and needs assess­ment, on-sight follow-up coun­sel­ing, and crisis/suicide pre­ven­tion intervention.

Fund­ing will be paid from the inmates’ com­mis­sary account. The pro­posal was accepted for a 6 month period.

Another bid was accepted from Buck­eye Asphalt for the Sheriff’s Office park­ing lot FOR $75,000.

Trans­fer of funds were accepted from the Sheriff’s Office to cover over­time and from the gen­eral fund to cover juve­nile hous­ing, $3,899.20

Dis­cus­sion at the com­mis­sion­ers July 16 meet­ing cen­tered around a pro­posed 1.5% levy of sales and use tax from 1995 that was was passed. The lan­guage of the levy, where the funds col­lected from that levy should go, and how long it was effec­tive were ques­tions considered.

The word­ing of the levy bal­lot on May 2, 1995 is as fol­lows: “the Board of County Com­mis­sion­ers of Mor­row County propos­ing to levy a sales and use tax in the amount of one and one-half per­cent (1.5%) for the pur­pose of pro­vid­ing rev­enue for the gen­eral fund for nec­es­sary ser­vices and con­struct­ing , acquir­ing, oper­at­ing, equip­ping or repair­ing a crim­i­nal deten­tion facility.”

The ques­tion was first brought forth by cit­i­zen Glenda Wil­son, who received infor­ma­tion on the topic from the Board of Elections.

“All the money com­ing in from the sales tax,” Wil­son said in ref­er­ence to the old levy, “should be going directly out to the [cor­rec­tions] facil­ity.” Wil­son voiced her con­cerns about a pos­si­ble new levy being intro­duced for the Sheriff’s Office, when she believed that fund­ing sources were already in place but not being used properly.

“It says on there [the orig­i­nal bal­lot] for nec­es­sary ser­vices,” answered Whis­ton, “this [levy money] isn’t solely for the jail.”

“It says nec­es­sary ser­vices and con­struct­ing,” coun­tered Wil­son, “it doesn’t say nec­es­sary ser­vices includ­ing– it’s all in one part. Ser­vices would have been the archi­tect and every­thing else. If I was vot­ing on that, I def­i­nitely thought I was vot­ing for the cor­rec­tions facil­ity and not for the gen­eral fund to have addi­tional money afterward.”

“That’s the way I would read it too.” said Harden.

Wil­son remarked, “We have one of two things hap­pen­ing: either it was mis­rep­re­sented to the pub­lic, what we voted on or the money isn’t going where it’s sup­pose to go.”

“I know that some of the money was used for the jail, I don’t whats hap­pened to it after then.” said Harden.

“It’s not some­thing that was for one or two years to pay it off,” observed Wil­son, “it was ongo­ing and the word­ing doesn’t change where it goes for. I don’t want another levy put on for the Sheriff’s Depart­ment or cor­rec­tions– to keep them going– when there’s one there.”

“We didn’t put all our tax resources to build a jail.” said Whiston.

“I think this was put on to build the new jail.” expressed Harden.

County Trea­surer Dan Green noted that other enti­ties and offices in the county fall under “nec­es­sary”. He used his office and the Audi­tors office as exam­ples, with­out them, no money could even be col­lected to put towards the cor­rec­tions facility.

“The Sher­iff has two bud­gets,” explained Harden about a new levy,” a law enforce­ment bud­get and a cor­rec­tions budget.”

“If you look at this, and we can check with the County Pros­e­cu­tor,” explained Whis­ton, “when it says ’ pro­vid­ing rev­enue for the gen­eral fund for nec­es­sary ser­vices’, in other words we have nec­es­sary ser­vices– such as the Trea­surer and Audi­tors Office and the Dog War­den. It doesn’t say just that, it says ’ and con­struct­ing [the cor­rec­tions facil­ity]. It doesn’t say that its only for ’ con­struct­ing, acquir­ing, oper­at­ing, equip­ping or repair­ing a crim­i­nal deten­tion facil­ity’. Its for that plus all the other nec­es­sary services.”

Whis­ton pointed out that the word­ing doesn’t indi­cate that it was only for fund­ing the jail.

“I think in 1995 the intent was to build a new jail and oper­ate it.” said Harden.

Wil­son com­mented that oth­ers who have read the bal­lot word­ing agreed with her, feel­ing that the money should be going directly to fund­ing at the cor­rec­tions facil­ity. She also stated that she felt the mat­ter should be looked over by legal coun­sel other than just the county prosecutor.

The com­mis­sion­ers will be research­ing the mat­ter in more detail and con­sult­ing with the County Prosecutor.

Unap­pro­pri­ated monies were approved for appro­pri­a­tion in the Devel­op­ment Office for admin­is­tra­tive costs, $14,542.

Trans­fer of funds were approved for the Zon­ing Office, the Mor­row Soil and Water Con­ser­va­tion Dis­trict, and Job and Fam­ily Services.

The renewal the NPDES per­mit through the Ohio EPA for the oper­a­tion of the Johnsville Waste Water Treat­ment Plant was also approved.

There will be no com­mis­sion­ers meet­ing on July 18.

Posted by Taylor Kaser on Jul 18 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.